About

masnavi.net is unaffiliated with any religious or governmental organization.
Its goal
is to present the Masnavi of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī Balkhī (more widely known as Rumi in some countries and as Mawlānā or
Mevlânâ in others) in such a way as to make it more accessible to readers from all walks of life.
As such, it is hoped that this site will be found beneficial by both interested members of the public and specialists.
While apparently the first of its kind in the category of free online offerings of the Masnavi together with its translations,
masnavi.net also serves as an excellent resource for native speakers of Persian.
The site currently includes a number of features distinguishing it from virtually every other offering of the poem, whether
printed or online. Among them are the following:

Dynamic display of either the Persian text or the selected translation

Random verse selector

Choice between 10, 25, or 50 lines per page

Please Donate Today

All of the work put into this project, from gathering the necessary Persian text
and translations, recitations, and making them suitable for usage on the web, all the way to the actual
programming of the site itself has been done independently by volunteers.

Be that as it may, it costs money to have a website on the internet at all. That is to say, there are non-trivial
monthly expenses for keeping this site up and running. If you value the Masnavi and all this site has to offer,
please make a generous donation through our secure paypal page by clicking the "Donate" button above or below.
Without your contributions, masnavi.net will quickly disappear.

FAQs

How can I help?

At present the site really only needs committed volunteers of the technical kind.

Those who are familiar with web development are most welcome to contribute.
Knowledge of Python, JS, JQuery, NoSQL DBs, Django, or UI design are all a big plus, but by no means required. If you are
interested in helping and probably learning something new, please email masnavi.net@gmail.com
as soon as convenience allows.

I found an error. Where can I report it? (textual or technical)

For textual errors:

To be able to process errors in a timely fashion and ensure the least likelihood of reintroducing others to the text base,
a special (but simple) format must be followed by reporters. All that one must do to have a text error in the Persian or
any of the translations fixed is fill out this excel spreadsheet and email it to us at masnavi.net@gmail.com. If you
have other questions about the process, let us know at the same address.

For technical errors:

The quickest way to help get a bug fixed in the site itself (and not the text) is to record how the bug was produced
in the first place. In other words, make sure you can describe the steps of how to consistently reproduce the bug.
Sometimes a screenshot of the error may also be helpful. Please email reports of technical errors to
masnavi.net@gmail.com.

How does the search feature work?

We can divide the response to this question into three main parts.

How searches in Persian and translations are treated

The search box on the main page accepts searches in Persian or the translation you currently have selected.
For example, if I had selected "English" from the "Translations" dropdown, regardless of the display style I had
selected (Persian Only, Translation Only, etc.), I would be able to search either the Persian or English translation.
The same scenario goes for all other translations.

How to use the search feature

The main way the text (Persian or translation) is searched is using a special notation called
Regular Expressions (for short they are called regexes).
This notation allows for very powerful and specific searches. What follows is a brief introduction
to using regexes for the purposes of this site including a few pertinent examples. Our search engine
only contains a very limited subset of the full capability of regexes.

Plain Searches and Using Quotes

The first thing to know is that words you put in the search box (irrespective of the language) will be searched
for exactly. For example, say you want to search for the word "night" (feel free to open another tab and
follow along yourself using the search bar). You will have returned to you all verses and headings in the
Masnavi that contain the exact word "night". That means the word "nights," "knight," "nightingale", etc.
will be searched.

However, if you only wanted all the instances of the word, "night" (and not likely extraneous words like
"knight", etc.), simply use quotes around the word. So searching "night" will do the trick and
find only the word "night," not "nights," nor "nightingale", etc.

Using OR ( | ) and Dot ( . )

If you want to find verses containing one phrase or another, you should use the OR operator ( | ). Here is an
example: tavern love | hidden treasure
This query will return all verses that either have both the words "tavern" AND "love" in them OR both the words
"hidden" AND "treasure".

Sometimes, when searching you may find yourself wondering how a particular non-English name has been romanized or
if special diacritics have been used. For example, suppose we wish to find all the verses with the name
"Muhammad."
Today's common English spelling (Muhammad) may not have been the one
the translator, Nicholson, used. To catch all instances of
the name in the poem, we'll use the dot operator ( . ). It is essentially a wildcard for any single character.
So, if we searchedm.h.mm.d
we could be sure that we caught all the variations on spelling that name, since disagreements only occur in the
vowels. Thus, our query will catch, "Muhammad", "Mohammed", "Mohammad", etc. This trick also works for avoiding
annoying diacritic marks like those found in the name "‘Alí" or "Báyazíd".

Useful Examples

If you read the last several paragraphs, you probably have a pretty good idea of how to
search for whatever you want in the Masnavi.
However, there are a few examples we want to provide that will likely be pretty common.

Two Words in the Same Verse

Say we are looking for a particular story in the Masnavi. We know there is a verse in this story that must
have the two words "dragon" and "frozen". How could we find such a verse? The search engine automatically
interprets words separated by space as an "AND" meaning that it will search for all verses which contain all
the words you entered.
Therefore, if we search the following
we will definitely catch all verses with both "dragon" and "frozen", no matter the order they appear in:
frozen dragon

This phrase or that phrase

Suppose you want to find all verses with either one phrase or another, or both of them.
To do that, all we need is the OR operator ( | ). So we type,honey wine | prophet said
Note that there must be a space on each side of the OR operator.

There is a translation that should be on this site. How can we make it happen?

Please just contact us with the details and we will give you all the information you will need to start preparing
it for us to put up on the site. You can reach us at masnavi.net@gmail.com.

How can I get in touch with/contact you?

You can reach us at masnavi.net@gmail.com. Feel free to send us comments, questions, and feature requests. However,
due to a high volume of emails and an (extremely) short handed group of volunteers working on the site,
we can't gurantee a response to every email. We sincerely appreciate your concern and interest in taking your time
to contact us, whatever it may be.

If you are intending to get in touch with us about errors in the text of the poem or the site itself,
or about how to add a new translation, please be sure to take a look at the appropriate questions in this FAQs section
before contacting us.

What edition is the Persian text? Who are the translations by?

About the Persian text:

We have chosen the edition of Mehdi Azar Yazdi at the present time because (1) it follows the Konya Manuscript
(the oldest manuscript of Masnavi, completed five years after Mawlana Rumi's death), with some exceptions (less than
four hundred differences in verses and headings), (2) it is on the Internet in digitalized form, and (3) it is the
edition that was used for the complete recitation of Masnavi, recorded in Iran on 114 MP3s (Books 1 and 6 by Hosayn Ahi,
Books 2-5 by Amir Nuri)--the only recitation (based on a good edition) that we know of on the Internet. There is
another digitalized edition on the Internet that is even more faithful to the Konya manuscript, the edition of Abdolkarim
Soroush (that differs with other excellent editions only in choices of variants contained in the Konya Manuscript itself),
which we may include at a later time. These two editions have many advantages over the Persian edition of R.A. Nicholson,
which has not been digitalized on the Internet, and which has over a thousand textual differences with the Konya Manuscript
(a copy of which he did not acquire until he had edited and translated Books 1, 2, and more than half of Book 3). Preparations have already been made to implement corrections in the English
translation (based on the appendices of corrections in Nicholson's edition). There are numerous scanning errors in the
English translation that need to be found and corrected. The Yazdi edition
could then be replaced with that of Soroush, in such a way that the audio matches the Persian text.
The Turkish translation may have scanning errors in need of correction; other adjustments may be needed in order to
improve conformity with the Persian text.

About the translations:

The English is by RA Nicholson. The Turkish is by Veled Chelebi.

The search feature is hard to use. Is there an easier way?

You can use Google to search just our site in whatever language you like.
Simply put this before your search in the search bar on Google:site:masnavi.net

However, while the site is still new, many of our pages can't yet be found on Google (or any other search engine).
Google takes time to include all of the pages of any particular site in its search engine.
That means that many results may not be found by using this method just yet.

Where are the prefaces to each book of the Masnavi?

Those are still being prepared at this time. Because of the shortage of volunteers in general, and
those who know web programming in particular, it may be a while before we can get them up onto the site.

Are there any 'Hot Keys' on this site?

Yes, several.

The UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT arrow keys allow you to navigate the pages and verses.

SPACE BAR will play the Persian recording for that verse.

If you have either the "Persian Only" or "Translation Only" display style selected, you can also use TAB to drop
down the translation or Persian below the currently highlighted verse.

Are there other sites that have the Masnavi?

Yes, several.

You can check out ganjoor.net. Not only do they have A. Soroush's edition of the Masnavi and
Rumi's Divan,
they also have the works of other Persian poets like Attar, Sana'i, and Hafez.

Why is the recitation different from the Persian text in some places?

We have begun by using what is available on the Internet. We chose to start with the edition of Mahdī Āzar Yazdī because
this is the text that was used for the complete recording of the Masnavi made in Iran (by Hosayn Āhī: Books 1 and 6; and
Amīr Nûrī: Books 2, 3, 4, and 5). Occasionally, the reciters have chosen words that are not in the Yazdi text.

For example, the second half of the final verse in Book 4 reads: īn chonīn āyena tā t'vān-ī ma-jū [“Do not seek such a
mirror as long as you can (help)”]. However, the reciter says: īn chonīn āyena rā hargez ma-jū [“Never seek such a
mirror”]. And the oldest manuscript of the famous first verse of Book 1 reads: besh’nō īn nay chūn shekāyat mīkonad/ az
jodā’īhā hekāyat mīkonad [“Listen to this reed how it complains, telling a tale of separations––”]. However, the reciter
says: besh’nō az nay chūn hekāyat mīkonad/ az jodā’īhā shekāyat mīkonad [“Hear from the reed-flute how it tells a tale,
complaining of separations––”]. In this case, the reciter has compromised by recording an “improved” version that has
replaced the original wording for centuries.

A different kind of example is the wording of the first Header that follows
Book 1: 34: `āsheq-shodan-e pādshāh bar kanīzak… [“How the king fell in love with the handmaiden…”]. However, the reciter
says: hekāyat-e `āsheq-shodan-e pādshāh bar kanīzak… [“The story of how the king…” ––and there are other differences].
In this case, the reciter was completely faithful to the Yazdi text. However, we have corrected the text in conformity
with the oldest manuscript (completed in Konya in 1278).

One member of the masnavi.net team has done a computer analysis
of the textual differences between the Yazdi edition and the Abdolkarim Soroush edition (the most accurate edition on the
Internet that conforms to the oldest manuscript) and found 359 differences in the wording of verses and headings (some
that are very minor, such as prepositions). Therefore, there are several options in the future in regard to the Persian
text and recitation: to keep the Yazdi edition as it is and tolerate the differences, to correct the differences, or to
replace the Yazdi edition with the Soroush edition. For the latter two options, it would be desirable to re-record the
audio files in the cases where the recitations need to be corrected in order to conform to the most accurate Persian
editions.

Who is responsible for the Persian recitation?

Books 1 and 6 are recited by Hosayn Ahi, and books 2-5 by Amir Nuri.
The recitation was sponsored by noorsoft.